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Lawmakers ponder Columbus schools fix

Columbus school attendance scandal

Columbus City Schools employees -- and perhaps others in schools throughout the state -- are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards. Read the complete series.

Your Right to Know

State lawmakers spent time yesterday getting details about a plan to create an independent auditor for the Columbus City Schools and share the district’s property taxes with charter schools.Among the concerns: whether charters also would be audited and whether district schools would be left under-funded.

Andrew Boy, founder of the Columbus Collegiate Academy charter school, told the Ohio House Education Committee yesterday evening that he fully expects and welcomes local audits in return for school-district tax dollars.

State Rep. Fred Strahorn, a Democrat from Dayton, suggested that lawmakers might insert a provision in the bill that would allow the new auditor for the district to also investigate charter schools that receive tax money.

Charters already are audited by the state, and often by their sponsors, Boy said.

“We’re all about accountability,” he said.

Rep. Denise Driehaus, a Cincinnati Democrat, wanted to know why the plan was so reliant on creating and supporting charter schools, rather than fixing existing district schools, and whether the existing schools would be financially squeezed by it.

Michael Dalby, president and CEO of the Columbus Chamber, said the problem with the district isn’t about money, it’s about leadership and training.

He said that, in business, it’s rare that more money is the answer to a problem, that it’s more typical to figure out how to do a better job with existing money.

There was much talk during meetings of the Columbus Education Commission — the group set up by Mayor Michael B. Coleman to study the district — about the need to close low-performing charter schools. But nothing ended up in the bill to implement the commission’s recommendations that would allow that to happen.

Rather, the idea is to feed the good schools and starve the bad schools, said Mark Real of KidsOhio, who was an adviser to the commission.

“The strategy is to grow more good schools, through the sharing of levy proceeds,” Real said. “The mayor’s not going to support low-performing schools.”

The House committee is set to vote on the bill at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. If the bill eventually is approved by the legislature, it will require the Columbus Board of Education to put a levy on the November ballot that would potentially be shared with charters.